The Reason
by Ripper101
Summary: There is implied violence and this story is SLASH. Giles Ethan as usual, too. Set in S7 and about Giles' visitation by the First. Just after the 'kill Spike, betray Buffy' deal.


Pairing: Ethan/Giles angst  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters...  
  
Author's Note: It struck me that the best way to explore Ethan and Giles' relationship was through the First. That way it's a sort of flashback and yet it doesn't give you long detailed explanations of what happened when. It simply tries to portray, not explain. Of course, if there's any interest, I'm thinking of focusing on each transition of Ethan's in turn and exploring them in short (one chapter) format.  
  
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"Ethan."  
  
Giles never told anyone about that particular apparition. The First never really appeared to him in places where they could be interrupted. Maybe he should be flattered that the stupid Evil Thing was trying so hard to best him once and for all. And then again, it seemed like all the First had to do was sit back and let him fuck it all up himself.  
  
"Well, well, well, Ripper," the apparition taunted, scooting closer, "Trying to kill the Slayer's pet vampire? You're making quite the habit of it, aren't you? Angelus, Angel and then Spike... sounds like jealously to me, luv."  
  
"I never asked for your opinion and I really can't be bothered discussing this with you," Giles murmured neutrally, turning his back. But Ethan was now in front of him, smirking that familiar smirk. "Even for Ethan, you're being unusually persistent."  
  
"And you'd know all about that." Ethan was moving forward slowly, slim and ethereal just like he'd always been. Ripper noticed that the First was using the wrong walk; Ethan hadn't walked this way since he'd been a young man.  
  
Giles opened his mouth to triumphantly point that fact out to the First when suddenly Ethan changed. Dark hair fell into long, soft, bouncy curls around smooth, milk-pale skin. The wide mouth reddened an unnatural lipstick shade and dark eyes glowed with an almost youthful exuberance. Sober clothing flickered and changed to crushed velvet and silk, the shirt hanging open over a smooth expanse of chest.  
  
"Ethan..." Giles couldn't help his eyes widening almost hungrily. The form that stood within kissing distance was the Ethan who had loved him, held him gently all through the few sober nights and held him safe through the many insane ones. He even smelt right- like perfume and cigarettes, with an intrinsic whiff of something essentially masculine.  
  
"Do you remember?" Ethan whispered deeply, "When all the world lay at our feet and all we needed was each other? We were Gods then. We commanded respect; didn't answer to annoying little girls or submit to psychotic scientists. And I could touch you; feel you. You always tasted so sweet, and the way you felt... you blew my brain, dearest."  
  
"I shook you cold," Giles commented before he could stop himself, leaning forward as if to try and capture Ethan's lips.  
  
Ethan chuckled and shook his head indulgently, moving back for good measure. "I always did guess you liked that record more than you said! Yes. You shook me *very* cold. I burned for you; and then..."  
  
Ethan took another step back and stared down at his wrists, flesh suddenly turned bloody and raw, the skin torn as if someone has manacled him and he'd struggled for release. Giles almost gagged, frozen to the spot as Ethan looked up with almost unbearable agony in his eyes. Blood began to ooze from somewhere just under the hairline of his dark curls, streaking in ghastly stripes down the bloodless skin. Bruises began to show on his face; his neck sported stark handprints from an aborted strangulation.  
  
Ethan stumbled backwards again, walking as if it hurt to move and Giles knew exactly what that stilted gait proclaimed. Rape was such an ugly thing to see and Ethan's pretty mouth fell open as he tried to gasp enough air into his lungs to keep from hyperventilating.  
  
Giles stood still and let just one sob burst out. It had terrified him to come to after the possession, covered in Ethan's blood, seeing his boyfriend broken in a corner and cowering away from him in chains.  
  
The apparition whimpered, a small lost sound that almost didn't make it out of his throat as a sickening crack was heard somewhere in the direction of his ribs. The clothes began to rip themselves off the man, leaving black- and-blue skin obscenely bared to Giles' petrified gaze.  
  
"Ethan, no..."  
  
"Ripper?" The voice was strong, laughing at him with manic hysteria in its every sarcastic tone.  
  
The apparition began to change again, to age. The bruises vanished and the man straightened up, walking forward in the way Giles had last seen him- still inherently graceful but less sexual. No, sexuality was something Ethan might have continued to play with, but the obsessive fear that it would lead him to being a rape victim in hospital again had seen to it that the man maintained a subdued form of his old ways.  
  
Giles stared at the thirty-something year old who had turned up at the museum and attempted to win him back. But something was different from that brash, brazen man he remembered. This version had wells of fear in his eyes, terror of some unnamable horror. Giles blanched- was this all just a trick of the First's or had he just never recognized that before?  
  
"Why are you scared?" he demanded, clenching his fists.  
  
The vision flinched and covered it with a slow, sultry smirk. "Whoever said I was?"  
  
"It's in your eyes, Ethan," Giles said bluntly, "Tell me the bloody truth." Rational thought be damned! Never mind that it wasn't actually Ethan standing in front of him!  
  
Ethan shrugged charmingly, but tossed a wary look at Giles from dark eyes. "I'm not scared. You just tend to get physically violent when you're upset, that's all. I'm not in the mood to cope with cracked ribs and a punctured lung... again. But of course there are other, more pleasurable ways you could use those hands on me. And perhaps I'll let you use a little hint of pain too if you ask nicely enough..."  
  
Sanity returned. "A tempting offer. How sad I have to refuse." Giles snorted and moved away.  
  
"Then don't," the thing said perkily from behind him, "I wouldn't want to make you *sad*, luv. So don't refuse!"  
  
"You're not Ethan and you never will be," Giles said quietly, "Now get out!"  
  
There was silence for a few minutes as Giles fiddled with books that he already knew had no answers in them. As far as he could tell, books were not going to be of much help now and as he had nothing really else to do at night, he'd pretend, if only for a short while.  
  
"Do you know how I died, dearest?" The voice was soft; only trace hints of bitterness in the wistful tones. Combinations, Giles though dizzily, of too many Ethans to count.  
  
"No," he answered shortly.  
  
"Do you want to?" the voice asked, "I could show you."  
  
Giles disdained to answer.  
  
"It hurt, you know. There were whirring machines and beeping machines and lots of sessions in the testing rooms." The whirring and beeping and little clinking, scratching sounds sounded around the quiet room, clinical voices murmuring abstract terms in the silent spaces.  
  
Giles grit his teeth and determined not to turn around and look.  
  
"At first it was just routine medical check-ups," Ethan's voice kept going, "I found it quite entertaining to try and ruffle their feathers. It was something to pass the time with. And then one day they strapped me down and put a needle in my arm, siphoning blood out of me like an oil well. I thought they were trying to drain me and I passed out from shock, pissing myself that I had to die in a cell and grateful that it had been painless. Except I came to and found myself left to recuperate for a few months."  
  
The silence hung heavy as the sounds of the testing rooms and machines faded. Giles couldn't hear anything for so long that he turned around, thankful to finally be alone. But he wasn't. He dropped the book in his hands and squawked, "shit," in surprise.  
  
Ethan was sitting on the floor, so thin as to be skeletal, the thick dark hair shaved right off and the once-soft skin dry and flaking. He had his knees drawn to his chest with his chin resting protectively on the bony points while his thin arms held them in place. The dark eyes were huge in his face and the scrawny neck moved so that both eyes stared accusingly at Giles.  
  
"Then they started," Ethan said simply. He got shakily to his feet and wires began to sprout from his skin, some disappearing under the thin robe to unseen attachments. A strange device unusually like a muzzle for humans fastened itself over the man's mouth, biting cruelly into the soft skin behind his ears and on the back of his head. A single manacle around the neck, as if Ethan were a dog on a leash, though Giles couldn't see what they were chaining him to.  
  
Dark eyes glazed over with pain as beeping and whirring and clinical voices started again. The body began to jolt as if on the receiving end of electric shock treatment. A heart monitor sounded from somewhere, speeding dangerously close to danger level. The quiet living room was fast disappearing as concentration centered only on the spectre in the middle of the room.  
  
Ethan was wheezing, struggling for breath and some kind of control. Then the robe was stripped from him and Giles almost fell into a dry retching fit. Surgical wounds began to appear over Ethan's body, a strange instrument connected to another strange wire seemed to be rammed indifferently into him somewhere in his abdomen. The cuts were oozing, Ethan's face was turning blue and the body seemed to have shrunk and shriveled into itself as if the pain was pressing down on the flesh like a physical presence.  
  
"Ethan!" Giles had called out and didn't notice that he was grabbing at this vision, fingers grappling with thin air.  
  
Ethan's hand reached desperately for his and then sank as the man fell to his knees and then sprawled on the floor, clearly unconscious. With the sick feeling that he couldn't help anymore, Giles watched as the body was rearranged, the robe appeared back on it. The wires and attachments vanished, leaving the battered flesh to do as it liked.  
  
And then with the nausea of dread gripping him, Giles stood back and made himself watch impassively as Ethan's prone body took a bullet to the head. Neat, tidy and very economical- Ethan was no more use to them and no use to anyone in the outside world so they 'disposed' of him.  
  
His Ethan had been shot like a farm horse too old to work any more!  
  
There was only one thing Giles could do. He took a deep breath, stared one last time at the blood-seeping figure and then walked right over it, his right foot partially treading where Ethan's left side would have been. He passed right through him and continued on his way out his front door. Ethan had no more use for him, but perhaps Buffy would.  
  
The First got off the floor and stared down at itself with distaste. Then it smiled and changed, growing blonde hair and a lithe female body. The vision of Buffy nodded in satisfaction, trotting off to go visit some of the others in this little fight. 


End file.
